Considerations For A New Version
The newly crowned King James convened the Hampton Court Conference in 1604. That gathering proposed a new English version in response to the perceived problems of earlier translations as detected by the Puritan faction of the Church of England. Here are three examples of problems the Puritans perceived with the Bishops and Great Bibles:
First, Galatians iv. 25 . The Greek word susoichei is not well translated as now it is, bordereth neither expressing the force of the word, nor the apostle’s sense, nor the situation of the place. Secondly, psalm cv. 28 , ‘They were not obedient;’ the original being, ‘They were not disobedient.’ Thirdly, psalm cvi. 30 , ‘Then stood up Phinees and prayed,’ the Hebrew hath, ‘executed judgment.’
The committees started work towards the end of 1604. King James VI and I, on 22 July 1604, sent a letter to Archbishop Bancroft asking him to contact all English churchmen requesting that they make donations to his project.
Wright Way: A New King James Bible
A new King James Bible has broken a centuries-old tradition and is following in the footsteps of several Bible translations that restored the Divine Name to its original place in the Old Testament.
The Divine Name King James Bible is raising eyebrows in the world of Bible translators for replacing the capitalized GOD and LORD with the English translation Jehovah in 6,972 places. In Hebrew the four letters representing the Divine name, also called the Tetragrammaton, is YHWH. To this day no one is certain of its exact pronunciation.
Translators of the Divine Name King James Version are following the pattern of other Bible translations, including Youngs Literal Translation, Darby Translation, The New World Translation, The American Standard Version and The Bible in Living English, in restoring the Divine Name where it was originally written.
Publishers of this latest King James Version wrote, We specifically left the Authorized Version as it is except to restore the Divine Name. We hope then to make people pause and ask themselves if they want ANY modern English Bible that does not display Gods Divine Name as it is found in the original writings no matter how well translated it is.
The group also stated it is not affiliated with or sponsored by any religious organization and the new edition was not produced by the direction, assistance or approval of any religious organization or religious community.
For further information, visit: http://dnkjb.net
What Is Catholic Bible
The Catholic Bible stands out in the crowd of the Holy Scriptures variations because it is the only bible that has added books from the Old Testament. These books are not found in other translations of the Bible.
In the Catholic Bible, one can find the books called Apocrypha, also referred to as the Deutercanonicals, which include Tobit, Maccabees I and II, Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, and Baruch. Although the Jews did not preserve these books, the Christians did as they recognize the books spiritual value. While the Jews and the Protestants do not consider the books as a part of the Holy Scripture, the Catholics value them as such and, in the 16th century, have made the books an official part of the Scripture at the Council of Trent.
Even Jerome and Augustine, two of the most popular Catholic writers before the fall of the Roman Empire, debated over the value of the Apocrypha. Augustine believed in the spiritual value of the books while Jerome did not. Jerome did much of the translation of the Old and New Testaments from Greek and Hebrew into Latin. His side was favored at that time.
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New King James Version
| NKJV Pew Bible |
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| King James Version |
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| Webpage |
| Genesis 1:13In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. |
The New King James Version is an English translation of the Bible. The complete NKJV Bible was published in 1982 by Thomas Nelson. The NKJV is described by Thomas Nelson as being “scrupulously faithful to the original, yet truly updated to enhance its clarity and readability.”
Safety Of Abiding In The Presence Of God
91;He who dwells in the secret place of the Most HighShall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.2;I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress;My God, in Him I will trust.
3;Surely He shall deliver you from the snare of the fowlerAnd from the perilous pestilence.4;He shall cover you with His feathers,And under His wings you shall take refuge;His truth shall be your shield and buckler.5;You shall not be afraid of the terror by night,Nor of the arrow that flies by day,6;Nor of the pestilence that walks in darkness,Nor of the destruction that lays waste at noonday.
7;A thousand may fall at your side,And ten thousand at your right hand;But it shall not come near you.8;Only with your eyes shall you look,And see the reward of the wicked.
9;Because you have made the Lord, who ismy refuge,Even the Most High, your dwelling place,10;No evil shall befall you,Nor shall any plague come near your dwelling;11;For He shall give His angels charge over you,To keep you in all your ways.12;In their hands they shall bear you up,Lest you dash your foot against a stone.13;You shall tread upon the lion and the cobra,The young lion and the serpent you shall trample underfoot.
14;Because he has set his love upon Me, therefore I will deliver him;I will set him on high, because he has known My name.15;He shall call upon Me, and I will answer him;I will bewith him in trouble;I will deliver him and honor him.16;With long life I will satisfy him,And show him My salvation.
Footnotes
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Which Denominations Use The King James Version
Which denominations primarily use the King James Version of the Bible?
I did a search on Google and could not find anything reliable.
- 7Most Baptist Churches in our area use it, but it’s not universal among Baptists. I think it tends to be less a denomination thing than a local congregational thing. I’ve seen several different denominations use it. The common thread is a more conservative membership. Even among more conservative denominations, as the individual Churches within the denomination get more liberal they tend to drop the KJV for something newer because that’s what the people want.
It’s really not a denominational issue, per se, but a doctrinal issue or a simple preference.
The King James Only movement are people and churches that believe that the King James version is the only one to use. They have various reasons for this.
James White has broken it down into five primary reasons for sticking with the KJV:
Ultimately, it’s not a denominational thing, but either a doctrinal issue or a preference.
New King James Footnotes
Significant explanatory notes, alternate translations, and cross-references, as well as New Testament citations of Old Testament passages, are supplied in the footnotes.
Important textual variants in the Old Testament are identified in a standard form.
The textual notes in the present edition of the New Testament make no evaluation of readings, but do clearly indicate the manuscript sources of readings. They objectively present the facts without such tendentious remarks as the best manuscripts omit or the most reliable manuscripts read. Such notes are value judgments that differ according to varying viewpoints on the text. By giving a clearly defined set of variants the New King James Version benefits readers of all textual persuasions.
Where significant variations occur in the New Testament Greek manuscripts, textual notes are classified as follows:
1. NU-Text. These variations from the traditional text generally represent the Alexandrian or Egyptian type of text described previously in The New Testament Text. They are found in the Critical Text published in the twenty-sixth edition of the Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament and in the United Bible Societies third edition , hence the acronym, NU-Text.
Copyright 1997, Thomas Nelson, Inc.
Dr. Arthur L. Farstad. Executive Editor.
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How Was It Translated
As the NKJV is a revision of the King James Bible, heres a quick primer of how the original came into being.
Very few English language Bibles existed in the 1600s. If you didnt speak Latin or Greek, then your chances of reading the Bible for yourself were almost non-existent. This also meant the KJV did not have a wealth of contemporary English Language sources to draw from. The few English language Bibles that did exist often remained on the pulpit. Amongst those English Bibles were the Great Bible, the Geneva Bible, and the Bishops Bible; the latter being the primary influence for the KJV as it was produced, under the Church of England a little over 50 years beforehand. All passages in the Bishops Bible that were deemed problematic at the time were changed for the KJV, but names of places and people remained unaltered.
The Bishops Bible drew a great deal from the original Greek, Aramaic and Hebrew texts. These texts included the Hebrew Masoretic Texts and Beza’s Greek New Testament.
The King James Bible was a rich Bible for the masses.
The team selected to create the NKJV aimed to continue the translation philosophy of the KJV. A philosophy called complete equivalence. In short, complete equivalence makes sure translators of the original scriptures always find the closest modern equivalent in English. This includes swapping out some of more dated pronouns that have fallen out of use. Thou is now you, thine is now yours.
Objections To Modern Translations
Only the KJV is Inspired
There is nothing in the Bible that would suggest that one particular Bible translation would be superior to others. Neither does it suggest that God would choose one particular Bible translation, in one particular world language, to be the most authentic version. The great majority of Christian denominations do not attribute any special accuracy or authority to the KJV.
Different Hebrew and Greek Manuscripts
The KJV was translated into English from a set of Hebrew and Greek manuscripts known as the Textus Receptus, put together in the 16th century. It was based on seven; manuscripts that were available in Basel, Switzerland.
Since that time, the scientific method of paleography has been developed. By analyzing the paper, ink and handwriting, scientists can determine approximately when and where a manuscript was written. Some of the results of paleography have been tested and verified by accelerator mass spectrometry, a form of radiocarbon dating.
It is now known that the manuscripts of the Textus Receptus date to the 10th century A.D. and later. Thus, they have been copied over by hand many, many times since the originals, with a chance of additional compounded errors each time.
Omitted Verses
Gender-Neutral Language
New Revised Standard VersionNew International Version
Copyright
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How The King James Bible Came To Be
When King James VI of Scotland became King James I of England in 1603, he was well aware that he was entering a sticky situation.
For one thing, his immediate predecessor on the throne, Queen Elizabeth I, had ordered the execution of his mother, , who had represented a Catholic threat to Elizabeths Protestant reign. And even though Elizabeth had established the supremacy of the Anglican Church , its bishops now had to contend with rebellious Protestant groups like the Puritans and Calvinists, who questioned their absolute power.
For the new king, the Geneva Bible posed a political problem, since it contained certain annotations questioning not only the bishops power, but his own. So in 1604, when a Puritan scholar proposed the creation of a new translation of the Bible at a meeting at a religious conference at Hampton Court, James surprised him by agreeing.
Over the next seven years, 47 scholars and theologians worked to translate the different books of the Bible: the Old Testament from Hebrew, the New Testament from Greek and the Apocrypha from Greek and Latin. Much of the resulting translation drew on the work of the Protestant reformer William Tyndale, who had produced the first New Testament translation from Greek into English in 1525, but was executed for heresy less than a decade later.
A Bridge Translation To Westcott And Hort
Pastor Kirk DiVietro of Franklin Massachusetts, sent an email to David Cloud of Way of Life Ministries in January of 2005 that reveals the hidden agenda behind the publication of the New King James Version. David Cloud prefaced Kirk DiVietro‘s letter with the following statement:
- Kirk DiVietro, Pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Franklin, Massachusetts, attended one of the Thomas Nelson planning meetings that prepared the way for the publication of the New King James. He testified to me that the Thomas Nelson representative plainly stated that their goal with the NKJV was to create a bridge to the modern versions, to break down the resistance of those who still revere the KJV. Following is Bro. DiVietroâs testimony as he gave it to me by e-mail on January 9, 2005:
- âOver 20 years ago I attended a pre-publication meeting of the NKJV held by the Thomas Nelson People and hosted by the Hackmanâs Bible Bookstore in Allentown, PA. I am personal friends with the owners who took great delight in seating me next to the brother of the main translator of the NIV. The meeting was attended by over 300 college professors and pastors. At the meeting we were treated to a slide presentation of the history of the English bible and in particular the King James Bible and its several revisions.
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Example Verses From The Nkjv Bible:
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. – John 3:16
For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. – Jeremiah 29:11
And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you. – Ephesians 4:32
Which Bible Version Is Best For You
We could have a very long conversation about the many different translations and all the technical reasons to read one or another version of the Bible.
And different people may have different reasons for selecting the version they read every day.
There are many good translations. And many people have theirpreferences.
Here are some things to think about and questions to askyourself when deciding which translation to get:
Will I enjoy the translation?
Will it be easy to read?
Will I understand it?
Will I be motivated to read it?
For many folks, just one translation will never do. If you are like me, you will have multiple translations around the house, on your computer and all your electronic devices.
Its a wonderful blessing that we have so many options for enjoying the Word of the Living God.
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What Is The New King James Version
King James VersionNew King James Version – Translation methodNew King James VersionTextus ReceptusKing James VersionNew International VersionNew King James Version – Pros and ConsNew King James VersionNew King James VersionNew King James VersionNew King James Version – Sample Verses
Recommended Resources
History Of The Version
The New King James Version was conceived by Arthur Farstad, a conservative Baptist and a former editor at Thomas Nelson Publishers. The project was inaugurated in 1975 with two meetings of 68 interested persons, most of them prominent Baptists but also with some conservative Presbyterians. The men who were invited to these meetings prepared the guidelines for the NKJV. The names of the scholars involved in the production of the version are listed below.
In 1984 the NKJV was slightly revised by a committee of reviewers chaired by Farstad.
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How Accurate Is The Nkjv
But how accurate is the NKJV, really?
Before answering, it helps to know two key terms used when discussing how accurate a Bible is. Whenever anyone discusses Translation accuracy, they will most likely draw a line in the sand between Bibles that are word-for-word and Bibles that are thought-for-thought.
Word-for-word Bibles present as directly as possible the text in the original scriptures. As the scriptures come from a culture far removed from our own, their texts are harder to understand and so any direct translations themselves will require of the reader a sharp eye and working knowledge of the context from which the Bible came.
Thought-for-thought Bibles operate under a different approach. They employ a greater level of textual interpretation throughout their translation process. This includes taking in wider contexts and meanings as a guide to what the original text meant and how that text would look in todays language.
If word-for-word is akin to Google Translate, operating with as little human interpretation as possible, then thought-for-thought is like a poem translated from another language, where meaning and form carry greater emphasis.
But where does the NKJV Bible sit on this spectrum?;
As mentioned, the translation used complete equivalence as its guide for translation. This means that as often as possible, the direct word choices are lifted straight from the original scriptures.
It is definitely a word-for-word Bible.;